Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/322

 while its expansive force [rests] on the degree in which it fills it [viz., the space], which can be specifically very different (as for instance the same quantity of air, in the same volume, exhibits greater or less elasticity, according to its higher or lower temperature). The general ground of this is that by true attraction all parts of matter act directly on all parts of other matter, but through expansive force only those on the surface of contact, owing to which it is the same, whether behind this, much or little of the matter exists. From the above, however, a great advantage for Natural Science arises, by its being relieved of the burden of having to manufacture a world from fullness and emptiness, merely according to fancy, and being able rather to conceive all spaces as full, and yet as filled in varying amount, by which empty space at least loses its necessity, and is relegated to the rank of an hypothesis; whereas otherwise, under the pretext of being a necessary condition to the explanation of the varying degree of the filling of space, it might lay claim to the title of a principle.

With all this the advantage of a methodically-employed metaphysic to the detriment of equally metaphysical principles, but such as have not been subjected to the test of criticism, is apparently only negative. But indirectly, notwithstanding, the field of the investigator of Nature is extended, since the conditions, by which it previously limited itself, and whereby all original forces of motion were philosophised away, now lose their validity. But one must guard against going beyond what the universal conception of a matter in general renders possible, and seeking to explain its particular or specific definition and variety à priori. The conception of matter is reduced to mere moving forces, and this could not be expected to be otherwise, seeing that in space no activity—no change—can be thought of, except as motion. But who can comprehend the possibility of fundamental forces? They can only be assumed, if they inevitably belong to a conception of which it is demonstrable that it is a fundamental conception which cannot be deduced from any other (as that of the filling of space), and of this [nature] is the force of repul-